


A clenched claw cupping a craggy chin

by Chaos_Greymistchild



Series: Sometimes it seems as though some puppet-player [1]
Category: 4000년 만에 귀환한 대마도사 | The Great Mage Returns After 4000 Years (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background Poly, Gen, I had to make a fuckton of charas up okay, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Lukas is so low-key ace it’s ignorable but like he’s ace spec, Resurrection, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Wingfic, altho its technically transmigration ig, lucas makes up spells on the fly as he flies, magic wings, not really but also yes lets kill the fucker, she appears like once, sorry not sorry but Isabelle does not spark joy, time to vore god
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:21:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25667362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaos_Greymistchild/pseuds/Chaos_Greymistchild
Summary: More than anything, more than the pain of being Looked Upon and Known and Knowing in return, more than swallowing his tongue and being crushed by a thousand stone hands, it was feathers being pulled from his back, his wings torn from his shoulders, his soul ripped to tatters that hurt the most.Or: all people bear wings upon their backs, ephemeral and bound to their souls. Upon Frey Blake’s death and Lukas Traumen’s resurrection, this changes both everything and nothing.
Series: Sometimes it seems as though some puppet-player [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1861114
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25
Collections: Parallels Fanworks Exchange 2020





	A clenched claw cupping a craggy chin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cywscross](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cywscross/gifts).



> FOOD FOR THE GREAT MAGE PEEPS
> 
> This was written before more recent novel and manwha chapters were translated/scanlated so certain worldbuilding facts ~~may~~ will be inconsistent with it.
> 
> Thank you to [SpontaneouslyAWOL](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpontaneouslyAWOL/pseuds/SpontaneouslyAWOL) for beta-ing and suggesting tags, which I am utterly terrible at.
> 
> and yes, I know, OC, Isabelle, shut up I love Minerva and she's not an Isabelle at least. Timeline is fucked to all hells but by the time I was like "wait timeline" I was already several k in and invested so like, fuck that too

More than anything, more than the pain of being Looked Upon and Known and Knowing in return, more than swallowing his tongue and being crushed by a thousand stone hands, it was feathers being pulled from his back, his wings torn from his shoulders, his soul ripped to tatters that hurt the most.

The pain, the loss, the blinding, empty, echoing, hollow ache ravages at what is left of his mind, turned dull and lifeless and numb.

There is a skitter of rock on rock and it is, oh a gasp of respite, of insanity, of loss, in the stone, grey nothingness.

 _Doubt, doubt, doubt some more, in the end until you doubt your own existence_.

It is a heady drumbeat, a wave and wash of rage and suspense, anticipation and uncertainty balanced on the edge of a blade tipping this way and that, pushing and pulling at his sense of self, the stone eternity blotting out everything. It crashed over him, and he screamed out to the void.

He promised, in the voice of a human, no magic to his name and no soul to his heart, that he would tear the Demigod from its throne, blot the sun it forged from the sky, rip the fabric of its reality and Self and Knowledge from it’s broken bones.

Then, a flash of the brightest light, and the voice of a boy aching for death.

The wings on his back were made of the most glossamer, most ephemeral of transparent glints of magic and souls he’d ever seen, all spider-thread filaments that faded like patchwork and lace into the light that surrounded him.

_I don’t resent anyone… a bird without wings is bound to die, just as nature intended. It’s all my fault… all my fault for not being born with wings…_

It was like the warmth of the sun began to shine on him again, even as the boy entered his rambling, dying mind, like a tumour that excised others.

He huffed a laugh, even as the boy died at his no-longer-bound feet, and he placed a suddenly warm-again hand in the boy’s hair. He ruffled those dove grey, matted, frazzled locks, the sunlight continuing to shine down on them and warm his skin.

_I will… walk the earth with my own two feet… fly to the highest peak… watch the very world with a single eye… with the biggest and strongest wings._

A blink, a gasp, a breath of air.

He had… returned?

It had been… 4000 years. So long, but he had finally returned.

He breathed in deep the chill of the night and the scent of green.

He couldn’t help the laugh that poured out of him. The weight of feathers and bone against his back was beyond relieving. It felt like starlight and benediction, like feeling the galaxy spin between his fingers and magic settle in his bones, like the darkest night poured solid over his shoulders and obsidian chiselled to magic-fuelled feathers of the blackest space between stars.

Frey Blake may have been the weakest magician on earth, wings and soul so transparent they may have not been there at all, but he was Lukas Traumen, the world’s strongest mage, with six wings like the night and made so real he could fly to the stars on them.

Frey Blake freed him from those stone hands and that grey endless abyss. So he, Lukas Traumen, would give the boy wings. Wings with which to climb higher than anyone else.

Wings with which to swallow a god and flay the secrets from its bones, because Lukas would never forget or forgive its arrogance and the punishment it struck down upon him.

Whispers followed him everywhere he went, and he preened into it, feathers real enough to rustle under the wind and leave small drafts in his wake. The drag of his wings while he had both feet on the ground was a familiar weight more steadying than anything else, the heavy press of being real and present and existing in this world.

It was, however, _quite_ annoying to realise that most mages of this era were weak enough that wing-accommodation wasn’t exactly present, and forced him to tuck all six wings uncomfortably close against his body, the two on top curving over his head and against his ears and the bottom pair about to cramp into his lap, skittering nervous over the floor and fearful of chairs and feet.

Despite the food, literal millennia better than what they had when he was still alive, he left the dining hall as quickly as he could bear too. The seating was just that uncomfortable.

Besides, he needed to find out more of this world. Demigod, or whatever had allowed him a second chance at life, hadn’t done him the favour of giving him Frey’s memories beyond the touches of yearning in those last few moments of his life, or any basic information of this world, 4000 years into the future and almost unrecognisable in every aspect.

He came to a halt. A child, dared stick his foot out so obviously for him to trip on? When he had six wings of onyx draped heavy across his back?

He could feel his hackles raise, and two sets of wings rose to tower over and around him, while the third curled around his shoulders and warmed him in a vain attempt to stop the trembling. 

He was… scared. 

In a way he hadn’t felt since Demigod, like his heart was hollow and cold, a deep well opened within him, like he was being poured out like paint, vicious and vivid and desaturated by the surrounds.

And it made him _furious_.

It was these fuckers, who drove the boy to suicide. He would gain vengeance for the boy who had given him his wings back.

He curled magic around his fist, and deliberately flared all six wings out large and wide and backdraft billowing cloaks in its wake. The large boy threw a fist at him, putting his whole weight behind it, unbalanced on one leg, and swinging blindly. It was the work of a fraction of a second, and barely a feather’s barb’s worth of magic, to slam a fist into that wide-open stomach, sending the boy shooting backwards into the wall. It was, perhaps, still a little too much power wrapped around his clenched fist.

The soft _tap, tap_ of his footsteps rang as loud and clear as bells as he made his way to the only empty seat, the clarion silence as crushing as a phoenix’s screech. The scrape of the chair’s legs on the wooden boards as he settled at the long desk seemed to break the kids out of their stupor. They clamoured for each other’s attention, gossips and whispers blowing strong as a gale through the room and barely calming to a whisper of winds over a prairie when the next teacher entered and introduced himself.

The filthy gaze that brushed past him didn’t even pretend to be anything less lecherous, and even just on the fringes of it, he felt like slime had been smeared into his skin. Then the teacher’s glare snapped back to him, and the ferocity took him off guard.

“Frey,” the teacher drawled, and he shuddered internally at the sound of the boy’s name passing those vile lips, “Finally decided to join us, I see?”

“Sorry,” he told him, hands pressed to each other and playing meek, “I was busy.”

“Are you saying there was something more important than my class?”

He joined the class in staring at the teacher in shock. The wings on his back had appeared overnight, obviously he had done _something_ to gain them, and if there was something out there that was able to change a single pair of wings like spider silk into six wings as dark as coal, then it was obviously more important than some random class!

An ultimatum was issued. He would answer every question correctly, or he would be punished, somehow, by the teacher.

“The first question: list the Magic Warrior King Kasajin’s three main weapons.”

Laughter poured out of him. Kasajin? That big hunk? The idiot who knew nothing but training somehow such a celebrity that his name was still known 4000 years later, he wept with laughter, giggling uncontrollably into the best. Not to mention he would have been so furious to have been known as a _Magic_ Warrior. He slapped the table as he howled with laughter. Kasajin would have killed the person who dared to even _suggest_ that he used magic somehow, was a magician somehow, and here history was, recording him down as such!

And then his laughter died with his mirth, as the teacher moved upon a girl who had only tried to defend him.

“King Ho’s Gloves, Giant’s Belt, and the Tempest Necklace,” he called out, an arm slung over the back of his chair and feigning casualness, “Kasajin only ever used those three items.”

He could still feel the weight and heft of them, the magic that thrummed through the necklace and pounded at the base of his throat like a pulse. The way Kasajin’s eyes had lit up when he gave him the gloves, and the way he had scorned the mage’s necklace but still wore it every day, the feel of skin-warmed metal against the rough cloth and the give of it against fingers dipping down.

A sharp hotness pricked at his eyes, and he blinked it back. No more bad flirting, no more shitty tea, no more searching for new mountain homes. It made his heart clench. He couldn’t— It hurt far more than he had thought it would. His wings wrapped around him in comfort, feathers warm and soft and curled around his head and shoulders.

He breathed in, shuddering and gasping softly with every exhale.

A new presence, full of magic and suddenly _there_ , startled him enough that he was able to shove that raw bundle of emotion to one side, enough that he could shake his wings limp and drain away the tension in his bones.

“Professor Kevin,” A voice called out from the door, “Unhand Cadet Isabelle. Please.”

A woman, tall and slim. Flat chest, flat ass, but muscle corded through her arms and legs that a thin blouse and tight stockings showed off well and the two wings on her back coloured a jewel-bright green. Finished off with a somewhat plain face and sharp eyes like swords, and he was instantly on guard.

“Cadet Blake, please come with me.”

He peeled himself from the desk and made his way over. She nodded at him and shot one last glare up at the teacher before turning to head out.

He was led through many hallways, past rows and rows of doors, until they arrived in front of a large, heavy one made of wood. The woman opened it with a brush of her hands, to reveal a large open room with tall windows lining the back wall bookshelves against the left wall, a large desk, and off to one side, two couches arrayed around a coffee table. A middle-aged woman was seated behind the desk, her own wings a navy blue and opaque.

“Director, ma’am,” he guessed.

“Cadet Blake,” the academy director ordered, “Have a seat. Minerva, some tea.”

The magic warrior – Minerva – disappeared from his back and he breathed out a sigh of relief. He had no desire to have such a scary woman at his back even if he could slap her into the floor.

Once they were both served tea – and accompanying snack foods – the academy director got down to business.

“Those wings of yours, the only people with six wings in recorded history are Kasajin, Schweizer Strow, Iris Phisfounder, and Lukas Traumen. Tell me, how did you get them, Frey Blake? Last night you were the least powerful mage in the world, and today you have magic and ability on par with the great sage Lukas Traumen? It’s impossible.”

He sipped his tea. “I am Lukas Traumen. Frey Blake somehow gave his body to me when he tried to— no,” he corrected, “when he _succeeded_ in committing suicide.”

“Can you prove that?”

“I know where Schweizer’s Dungeon is.”

Shock was plainly written across their faces and the sudden ripple of their magic. He’d taken the chance, no matter how small, and guessed right. That guy would never have let news of where his biggest stash was, especially not with how much effort he put into protecting them.

“The mountain that pierces the clouds. At it’s peak, there’s a beautiful lake. And on that lake, there’s a little island.” He sighed. “He’s always inviting me, wanting to show off. He loves the blasted thing.”

“… I trust you understand we’ll need to confirm that?”

He leaned back into the couch, smirking arrogant and all six wings curling over his shoulders to and around his waist too keep them from being crushed. “Of course. But don’t think you can break through or find it without my help.”

“There’s no place other than Drake Mountain that fits the bill for ‘the mountain that pierces the clouds’.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and lolled his head over the back of the couch. “4000 years is a long time. Are you sure that mountain is still the right one?”

A sword appeared at his throat.

“Shall I just kill you if you won’t tell us?” Minerva asked silkily.

“You can try.”

“Minerva.”

She snarled but tore her blade away from his throat.

A thin trickle of blood ran into his collar and he tsked. “Look what you’ve done, my shirt is ruined now.”

She looked like she wanted to take his head off his shoulders entirely.

He smiled innocent at her with Frey’s face.

“We… are taking the shabbier ship.”

Minerva stuck her nose in the air. “The Hilde is full, and we can’t just kick out trainees for spaces.”

Her voice lowered, and she leaned into him ever-so-slightly. “Also the area this ship passes through is thick with pirates. There may be two ships guarding us and the trainees with two 4-star battle mages from the magic tower on them, but I trust my ability the best. And if we end up in close combat, I’ll be better as a magic warrior than those magicians.”

He sighed. At least it was free. And they didn’t have to wait four days for the next free ship that would get them where they wanted at a decent time. He tugged the shawl and pressed his wings tighter against himself. Although the one downside was that he needed more effort to hide his wings, since he couldn’t hide in their shared room all the time and they would be far too recognisable.

He spent the first couple days in relative solitude, only talking quietly with Minerva and sometimes the captain of the ship as he leaned against the railing.

“Pirates!” A man screamed as he ran across the deck, “Pirates are here!”

The two of them whipped around to pin the man with sharp glances, then whirled around again to stare at the sinking warships that had once flanked theirs.

“Fuck,” Minerva spat, drawing her sword. “Sinking two warships like that isn’t something mere pirates can do. Either they’re being backed by someone, or they’ve got their hands on something seriously powerful and annoying.”

“I know,” he snapped back, “We had pirates 4000 years ago too, you know. Besides, I’m more worried about the fact that the third Ice Spear aiming for this ship vanished. Someone interfered and it wasn’t me.”

He hadn’t reacted in time. The presence that would have been crushing for any below five or maybe six circles could barely touch him, but the familiar weight of death had made him freeze, so reminiscent it was of Demigod. He grit his teeth. He would tear that bastard from his throne, but to do that he needed to be able to control himself and to be able to react in time, and he would need to relearn those skills fast. Who knew how long his escape would go unnoticed? With how Demigod perceived time, maybe it wouldn’t gone unnoticed for decades, but he needed to plan for the eventuality that it noticed soon. As soon as possible, be prepared to tear it apart, piece by piece.

He forced his shaking hands to still. It was just an undead, that was all. Just a skeleton that couldn’t accept it was dead yet, and took it out on everyone else.

“Who blocked the Ice Spear, then?”

“I don’t know.”

Minerva tsk’ed beside him, mana bleeding into her slim sword and wings drawing back to arch aerodynamic and sleek over her.

They ignored the screams and the wiling as the first pirate boarded, and then the second, and then the third, until all the pirates were planted firmly on the deck. Then, she shot forward like lightning, spearing on pirate in the shoulder and tossing him overboard and sweeping her sword wide to catch another.

A thrum, a flash of undead mana, and she was thrown back across the deck. He barely glanced at her long enough to note the way she landed steady and crouched, wings flared out. Instead, he focused on that thrum of mana, and the cloaked figure that the whorls of shadow and purple mist gathered around.

“Come out,” a voice rasped out, make audible through the mana that coiled through the air, “The one who blocked my magic. Show yourself. Or I’ll immediately kill them all.”

Dozens of gigantic ice spears formed in the hair, circling around them, gravity held at bay only by the lich’s uplifted hand and the magic it channelled.

One of the students stepped forward on steady feet. He congratulated them, internally. It was difficult for even graduated mages to not be trembling under the weight of a five-circle undead like this one.

“My name is Peruan Jun,” the student declared.

He ignored everything, ignored the futile negotiations, ignored Minerva half-tensed and cat-like with wings arching hooded over her to make her seem larger, ignored the pirates arrayed around the deck terrorising the students, eyes only on the lich, searching. Shadowy tendrils shot out from the lich’s cloak, and he immediately raced forward, mana sinking deep into his bones. He slapped Peruan aside, jumping backwards to avoid the lich’s binds as well.

The shadowy ropes crashed into the deck, splintering wood.

The lich stared at him, long and silent.

“I’ve killed countless magic warriors like you,” it hissed, “Give up and be mine.”

Spines of bone, so soaked in the lich’s magic they had turned a royal purple and flat and sharp as swords, segmented like an insect’s carapace, and buzzing with a false life.

“ _Living Missile._ ”

He dodged, then dodged again as the tracking magic on it sent it flying back at him from behind, then darted over the deck, dodging the skeletal hands reaching up for him. _There_! He Blinked forwards, in an instant outpacing the magic arrowing at his back. Hand through the lich’s chest, its crystal life vessel shattering under mana-reinforced fingers.

The fires in that danced in the lich’s skull like eyes were snuffed out, and the bone that made up its body crumpled to dust that disappeared in the sea breeze, as the magic that powered it and tethered its soul to this world ceased to be. Minerva was moving an instant later, cutting through the pirates with such speed that she was standing next to him in the next moment, splattered in blood and boots soaked with it and sword dripping a quiet _plink plink_ onto the deck.

Minerva swiped her sword through the air to clean it of any blood and then sheathed it in two quick, sharp motions.

Her wings had been stained a darker blue-green. Almost cerulean, but a slightly darker hue. The slightest bit solid and real, too, the wind breaking just barely against them.

She must have been close to breaking through, if the crushing pressure of the lich and the easy slaughter of the pirates had boosted her so.

“Congratulations,” he told Minerva, softly but genuine.

She smiled at him, bright with a delight that made her seem so much younger, and that reminded him viciously of the glee that Iris had always taken on the battlefield, spiralling wild through the skies with her Valkyries. He swallowed thickly, looked away.

The memory cut into him, of blood splashing against her beaming face and the toothy, feral slant to the smile she had shot him and the way they had crashed in the middle of it all and kissed until breathless and bruised.

“What’s wrong?” Minerva asked him.

He clenched his fingers into fists. Refused to look at her. “It’s nothing. You just reminded me of someone. We need to take care of this mess.”

He turned sharply, to clench the wooden railing. He tried to push that bleeding in him back. To turn the razor from his heart. It hurt. To know that even she was gone, never coming back. She had always burst with life, was always living for the heat of battle and constantly skin-hungry. Crawling into their laps, spontaneous hugs for no reason other than she could, lying sprawled over all three of them, feet in one lap, torso across another chest, head propped on the last’s back.

A hand, light on his shoulder, and he flinched.

It drew back instantly, and he almost thought it belonged to Iris for a moment – but no, she would have leaned into it, crushed any fear beneath her brazen behaviour and shockingly gentle hugs.

And, she was dead.

Gone.

He breathed deeply, carefully lifted his hands from splintered wood.

“Do you need anything?” he asked Minerva.

“I don’t,” she said like nothing had happened, and a shock of relief slammed through him, “but the captain would like to thank you,” she continued, “and I think some of the students too.”

She stared at him intently. “Is that fine for you?”

“It’ll have to be.”

“… The Ispania Mountains, after all?” Minerva asked.

“Drake Mountain,” he corrected, pointing to the volcano in question, “And I’m not sorry for that bit of deception at all. Drake Mountain is volcanic, with an island floating on a lake in the crater. The dungeon should be buried in underneath the island, possibly warrened through the whole mountain.”

Minerva tilted her head back to stare up and up and up at the mountain, reaching up so high that the clouds covered any glimpse of the peak.

“Well,” she muttered, “This is going to be fun.”

He hummed an agreement, took a gamble that she was like Iris. “Let’s get up as fast as possible, you can play later.”

It’s akin to a stroll in the park, really. The drakes the fly around the mountain peak are nothing more than minor irritants – they wouldn’t even pose that much of a threat to him if he was a five-star. For him, a nine-star and as familiar in this new body as his own, and Minerva, the knight equivalent of a six-star, nothing posed a threat, not even the mutants that are as casual and frequent to this place as normal monsters are to others. They only hid when the shadow of the Drake King flew by, but even then, they were safe in the knowledge that they could take the monster and win if they really wanted to.

And then they were at the peak, and sliding down the lip of the crater, and he was carrying Minerva as they flew over the lake to the island sprouting from the glittering water. A single house stood there, the wood and stone still intact despite the millennia. Preservation spells, no doubt.

Lukas followed the run of magic, mana flowing through the mountain like a river, or a network of roots, until he chased it to the base of an old, giant oak. There was an opening, between two of its massive, gnarled roots that lead downwards in a gentle slope.

He nodded to Minerva.

“This is the entrance,” he said, false carelessness in the shrug of his shoulders and breezy tone, “The dungeon itself is buried in the mountain.”

Minerva raised an eyebrow at him. “Well?” she asked archly, “Lead on.”

He snorted, then stepped into the dark.

“So this is Schweizer’s dungeon…” Minerva murmured.

He smiled with pride at the awe in her voice. “That show-off always liked things like this, you see,” he told her cheerfully.

A giant door five, no, six, times his height, sunk several feet deep into the stone and glowing with magic enough to light the entire cave. Five giant magic crystals, each the size of his head or twice that, was embedded in the stone of the door. Runes and long lines glowed blue-white with arcane power, the spell woven deep into it. A spherical magical interface rested on a small round table next to the door, and he resisted the urge to touch it.

“Shall we go back now?” He asked.

“Go back?” She asked him, scandalised, “You want to _turn away_ from _Schweizer’s dungeon_?!”

He shoved his hands into his pockets to try to remove the urge to touch the door, to weave his magic into the interface. “Yeah, I do.”

It was too soon. He wasn’t sure he could deal with it, with knowing that Schweizer was… truly gone. No more friendly arguments, no more invitations to visit him that they both know would go nowhere, no more arguing over grey hairs or showing off new spells and applications to each other in dizzying heights of skill and control.

Not to mention any gifts Schweizer left behind… he didn’t want to give them to her, or to the headmaster, or to any of them. Greedy, greedy, he chided himself, but didn’t move.

He wanted to see Schweizer again, so desperately. The urge ached in his chest, carving out something hollow and empty in him. He turned away from the door, forced himself to take steady, shaking, painful steps away.

It would only hurt him more, he told himself.

It would just be acid dripped into his wounds, he told himself.

It was for the better, he could come back any time, he told himself.

It was still nearly beyond him to exit the cave, then walk past the trees to the level green plain, then to the edges of the lake.

He took deep breaths of the air that tasted of brimstone. Even this, even this was so reminiscent of Schweizer that it made breathing it in burn like ash in his lungs.

He steadied himself, with wings curled around him and the gentle wind tugging softly at his hair and feathers.

After a while, Minerva joined him.

“You really miss him, huh.”

She was soft and quiet, like she’d never been to him before. Sympathetic. Pitying.

It grated on him.

“Don’t you _dare_ pity me,” he hissed, savage and spitting. His wings arched high above him and magic gathered at his fingers and the tips of each primary feather.

“Schweizer was so good. He was always there for us. He—”

“You loved him.” Soft, quiet, _understanding_.

Lukas laughed, broken and ragged and torn. “Yeah, I loved him. I still love him. And I miss him so much, I miss them all so much, it feels like my heart’s been hollowed out. Can you imagine it? Can you imagine what it’s like to love three people with all that is you, and then to give your life for them and for humanity, and then you wake up four thousand years later and they’re not only dead, they’re ashes in the wind, they’re a bare passage in history books of a forgotten era, and the only remnants of them are your memories and the handful of monuments left?”

She was thankfully silent, for a long, drawn-out breath.

A drake roared, and he couldn’t take it anymore. He flared his wings, gathered the magic that laced through them and wove through the foundations of his soul, felt for the winds and the drafts that rushed through the higher areas of the volcanic cove. A boost of magic, mixed wind and air and explosive power wrapped within a shell of pure magic, and he was shooting through the air, wings pressed tight around him and flaring out to catch the thermal currents pushing him higher.

Then he was high enough to kiss the thin breath from his throat, and watch the clouds spiral out beneath him, and touch fingers to the Drake King’s scales and over the coils of its tail. Minerva was only a small speck swallowed by green beneath him, and he felt a flash of guilt for leaving her to fend for herself alone.

The guilt was soon snatched away, by the thrum of magic pulsing through him just to give him air to breathe and to keep him alive, by the rush of wind under his feathers and the vivid heat of thermal pushing him higher, by the roars of drakes rattling his bones and drowning out every other sound.

He dipped lower, twisting around the drakes flying through the air surrounding him, the thin cocoon of magic wrapped around him like a fragile eggshell but as strong as golem armour.

A scream _rang_ through the air, loud and high and piercing. He dropped through the air like a stone, then caught himself again as he skimmed over canopies. Minerva was beneath him, streaking like an arrow through the forest – in some cases quite literally – and he sent his magic thrumming through the mountain range, seeking— something.

His magic pinged something, just before another scream rang out. He cursed, snapped his wings wide and caught the drag of still air under his open wings, climbing back up through the air as fast as he had fallen. He spun his magic around him, wove it through his eye and spat a rushed incantation, and shot it towards where he’d felt that ping back.

The scene all but splattered against his eye – and really, he needed to improve this spell _so much_ , he bemoaned – and he flinched back slightly, just enough to wobble ungainly in the air. He flapped frantically, barely enough control to make sure his wings didn’t slap into each other and make everything even _worse_ , and tumbled into the canopy. He tugged his wings around him, pinion feathers flicking bursts of wind to guide him through the trees and an old spell, familiar as Iris’ demons– familiar, washed over him, steeling his wings to armour and forming a thin layer of buzzing magic shielding atop.

He burst into the clearing with a spiralling barrel roll to bleed off the excess momentum, and let his wings unfurl slightly as he ran across the ground, planting feet firmly in front of the victim and deflecting the knife up. Despite his fumbling, it seemed he’d arrived in time to save the boy from the knife he’d seen thrown in his spell.

The spell that still blocked half his vision – he _really, really_ needed to fix that spell up – was still active, and he dismissed with an irritated wave of the hand, absently weaving the dissipating magic back into his feathers. He would be able to properly analyse it later, and it would be easier if he still had a few lingering traces of it tucked away somewhere.

“Using live humans as targets to play darts… Looks like you had fun, assholes.”

He didn’t give them another moment to register the full expanse and black night of his wings before casting another spell wordlessly. A feather quietly disappeared. Behind him, a scythe seemingly made out of white diamond and wrapped in pristine bandages span into existence. The crooked shaft and jagged blade detracted none from the purity of the scythe, simply bent the grace to savagery.

Light Scythe. A five-star spell.

A skeletal hand reached out of the whorl of magic, grasping onto the scythe.

The bandits turned tail and ran. The scythe swept out and cut through all but one of them, who he tagged with tracking magic and let go free.

Even if he wasn’t one who would turn away from people being… _played_ with like this, he would still kill them all. If Demigod was entertained by humans killing and enslaving and torturing each other, then he would do everything in his power to stop it and spoil it’s fun and games.

Minerva burst into the clearing a breath later, one hand on the hilt of her sword and drawing in a flash. Light Scythe was still relatively fresh, so he let the spell take the sword strike, stepping back lightly just in case—yup, she’d broken the five-star combat spell. His estimation of her went up a couple notches.

The few seconds the clashing of blades and the shattering of the spell bought him allowed Minerva to recognise him and she sheathed her sword again.

“You killed them all?” she asked, nodding to the bodies.

“Let one go,” he corrected, “I put a tracking spell on him.”

She paused. “You don’t want to go after Sch—” she broke off, having evidently seen the boy tied to the tree behind him was still alive. She corrected herself, “You don’t want to go after the dungeon but you want to spend your time chasing down bandits? They’re not small-time and they’re not weak – these are the Yspania Mountains after all, and they’ve evidently managed to survive some time here until you came crashing through – but they’re still just bandits, someone else could easily take care of this.”

He didn’t smile at her. He took no joy in hunting down mere – she had been right in that respect – bandits with wings delicate as butterflies and who crumbled under his power like ants. He remembered the words he spoke, the last words he spoke before he died all those millennia ago. “It’s community service isn’t it? Besides, we’re here. Better take care of it on our way out than risk losing anyone who might not be prepared.”

“You think they’d be that strong?” _Not as strong as us_ , went unsaid.

He threw her words back at her. “These are the Yspania Mountains after all.”

She sighed and conceded with a graceful bow of her neck.

“Community service, huh. Guess we’re volunteers now.”

That startled a laugh and a smile out of him. “I guess we are.”

He cast a Heal strong enough to make sure the boy would survive until they could get better treatment, then they left and tracked the spell through the forest. Minerva flitted silent through the forest while he flew above the canopy, relying on a hastily cast Telepathy on the earrings that Minerva had worn. The heavy earring tugged slightly painful and irritating on the new healing piercing against the wind, but he slid another small Healing over it and boxed the aching irritation to the back of his mind.

 _Stop_ , he sent to Minerva.

Immediately she ground to a halt below him.

 _What_ , she grumbled.

_Moving._

The question mark he got back carried a strong hint of _well get on with it_.

He huffed a laugh, remembering to swallow the sound at the last minute. He sent her the movement patterns as he slowly descended to crouch in a tree.

 _The main road_ , she shot back a moment later, _they’re heading for the main road through the mountains_. Flashes of a map filtered through the connection, then solidified.

He raised himself up precariously on the top of the tree and cast about.

 _There_ , she told him, viewing through his eyes.

Lukas sighed, reached for the remnants of that tentatively named Farsight spell, and wove it slower and with far more care around his eye, casting the other end towards the road.

A beat, as they simultaneously thought, oh _shit_ , reverberating through their skulls, before the two of them were shooting towards the road and the bandits.

Lukas hung back a bit, took an extra moment to dispel the spell and the still irritating vision-obscuring side effect that came with it, so Minerva got there first, just in time to block the sword stroke. He landed seconds later, three of his wings spread wide to guard the two women.

“So, you’ve finally revealed yourself, Ghost.”

The bandit’s eyes swept over the three of them, over his six wings and Minerva’s jewel-dark stain. “And your woman too.”

“Are you the leader?” Minerva asked, cutting to the chase as she slid her sword back into its sheath with a pointed _click_.

The bandit’s eyes slid over to where they had come from. “Our base camp is in that direction.”

Lukas summoned all his hate for Demigod and smiled, nasty. “I took good care of them.”

The bandit roared. “Kill that white-haired bastard immediately! Don’t give him time to cast!”

Beside him, Minerva sighed. “Really, you would think they’d know better, what with your wings,” she muttered under her breath, rolling her eyes minutely. She raced forward to meet them, sweeping through the bandits like a farmer scything the harvest.

He smiled, without hatred. He didn’t need all that much time to cast but he didn’t feel any need to correct that assumption when Minerva was holding her own quite fine. It was almost like a gentle warm up with Kasajin, who would brush aside attacks like they were nothing and laugh at him while he spat out line after line of spellchant—

He jerked himself back to the present.

“Lukas!” Minerva shouted.

It took him a moment to register her tone as not concerned or desperate but annoyed, and he flicked off a few Magic Missiles first on instinct. She was blisteringly irritated. At him.

She slapped aside the bandit leader’s sword and took that second to glare at him. “Are you going to do anything, or will you stand there gawking while I do all the work?”

He gathered himself again, then directed his magic towards the ground with barely a thought.

_Jump!_

Minerva leapt, high, ridiculously high, wings flaring out to guide her, minutely through the air. But he hadn’t exactly told her what to be careful of, he thought with exasperation as the ground folded in on itself and swallowed the bandits whole between the grinding stone.

There was a soft _click, tap_ , as Minerva landed next to him.

“That was a little overkill, don’t you think?”

“You got what you wanted,” he said, gesturing towards the fresh earth.

“I suppose I did,” she agreed. “Right, let’s go pick the boy up and then get everyone back to town. I’ll get him, you stay here and look after the Aquarid, no point in all of us going all the way into the mountain and then back out here again.”

“Aquarid?”

A long pause.

Minerva dragged a hand down her face. “Right, you wouldn’t know. Just– look after them.”

“Thank you for accompanying us,” Sonia said, at the entrance to the main Jun property in Kausymphony.

Lukas shook his head. “It was nothing, we were coming here too, anyways.”

Minerva lay a hand on his shoulder. “We should get going,” she told him, “Both of us need to get more presentable before our meeting.”

“I’m sure the Jun residence will be willing to help you,” Sonia assured them, jumping on the chance, “I doubt you have tailors and clothes picked out already, the Jun residence is extremely powerful and will no doubt be of great aid. Please accept our aid as a sign of our gratitude.”

He looked at Minerva at his side. She was leaning into him slightly, the faint tilt to her lips more smirk than smile and the languid relaxation in every inch of her body. She was all but screaming _why not take advantage of their hospitality while we can?_

He sighed, shrugged. “We’ll accept.”

Sonia beamed, positively lit up. “We’d be delighted to have you.”

They were quickly led to a sitting room by one of the veritable army of butlers serving the one of three Jun properties in the capital alone. It was enormous, all chestnut-stained wood carved in elegant patterns and tall windows looking over green lawn and gardens. Armchairs and couches were scattered lightly throughout the room, with a small table by each arm, or a long, low table in front of a few. There was even a fireplace in one wall, the mantle over it made of a pale marble threaded through with gold and a tall mirror that nearly reached the ceiling was sunk into the wooden wall above the mantle.

Lukas let himself fall onto the couch face-first, luxuriating in the sheer softness of the cushions and the ability to stretch out his wings and flop them over the back of the couch and the floor without a care in the world. He tilted his head to the side, watched Minerva grow increasingly uncomfortable with her perch on an armchair, and took pity on her.

“Lie down like I am,” he told her, “Or sit on something without a back.” He reached out a lazy hand to helpfully point out the circular chair near her.

“That’s normally a footstool,” she snorted, “I’m not sitting on that. Besides, it’s only a little annoying.”

He shrugged as best he could under the weight of his wings. “Suit yourself.”

No long after, a maid led a small army of men and women into the room, most weighed down with packages of various shapes and sizes and all dressed in what appeared to be the current fashion. The woman leading the charge was wearing a dark brown dress with lighter brown pinstripes and gathered ruffles at the hem and a corset of the same colour embroidered in black on top. Black lace ruffles peeked out from under her collar and at the ends of the dress’ sleeves, and her wings suffused a soft lilac through her clothes.

“This is Madam Lizbeth, the personal tailor and designer of the Jun family,” the maid introduced with a bow, “Madam Lizbeth, these are our honoured guests, Dame Monique and Frey Blake.”

Lizbeth bowed to them, then straightened with a sparkle in her eye. “I see you two both also have wings that are solid and need accommodation for,” she gushed, “and Frey, you even have six of them! This is so exciting, I so rarely get to design and tailor for people who need the accommodations outside the Jun household since all the other houses have their own personal tailors and designers as well. Oh, I’m so happy!”

His jaw was resting on his crossed arms and Minerva’s eyebrows seemed to have fused with her hairline.

“Measurements, measurements,” Lizbeth chirped, “Come on, strip!”

One of the men who had just put down a box pressed a hand to his face. “Madam Lizbeth,” he said, voice strangled.

She squeaked and her hands flew to cover her suddenly red face. “Ignore that!” she shouted from behind her hands, “Just taking off the outer garments will do! And one of the maids can measure!”

He laughed quietly in the back of his throat. Carefully, he brought his wings in, then stood up. With equal care, and the help of a maid, he took off his armour until he stood clad only in his undershirt – which had a cross slashed into it to create an opening for his wings – and pants. “Is this good?”

She peeked out through her fingers. “That’s good. James, if you please?”

The same man who had scolded her before approached him, pulling the measuring tape from around his neck. He lifted his arms as directed as the other man called out numbers to another. Minerva was being put through much the same, her measurements taken by one of the accompanying women. As the numbers were being recorded, Lizbeth thumbed between papers, running her fingers down and across them.

Once done, Lizbeth barked out instructions, people rushing to-and-fro to pull garments out of boxes and hold them to their fronts. Lukas was not too proud to say that he was dizzied by the frenzied action and flying silk.

In the end he was forced into a black buttoned shirt under a heavily embroidered silver-on-black vest secured at the base of his neck and back under a startlingly white coat with the back slit open in a curving triangle, the base laced up and the top with a strange mantle-like flap laying across the top of his highest-set pair of wings. His shirt was tucked into a pair of surprisingly sturdy pants, black and high-waisted with the vest resting on top.

Minerva looked equally uncomfortable – probably because they had attempted to fit her into a dress at first. Instead, she suffered a similar shirt-vest-coat-pants ensemble, but themed in red and black.

Lukas looked her up and down. Had she grown taller…?

She rolled her eyes at him, turned side-on and showed him the heel of her tall boots.

That made sense.

She checked the watch that had been slipped into her vest, then yelped. “We need to leave now! We’ve spent too much time here, the meeting’s in twenty!”

“I greet Your Emminence, may your reign be ever-prosperous and ever-long.”

“Rise, Minerva of Westroad Academy.”

Minerva picked herself up from her bow on one knee, glaring at Lukas. He shrugged, flared his wings pointedly.

“Lukas Traumen,” he introduced himself, rolling his shoulders to draw all eyes to the rise and fall of his six pitch-black wings. “I am returned,” he added, dry.

“Can you prove you are who you are?” the current reigning monarch – Wei Kastkau – leaned forward with interest, even as their voice and raised eyebrow were clearly sceptical.

“I know where Schweizer’s Dungeon is, and confirmed the current location before arriving here.”

The nobles lining the room murmured.

“You can lead our knights to the greatest dungeon crafted by mankind built over four thousand years ago?” Asked a noble dressed in a long, hooded robe.

“Yes, although I’d only do that after going there myself and confirming the contents. Schweizer loved his stashes the most out of all of us, I wouldn’t be surprised if he left safeguards that would prevent anyone else from entering, and more than a few personal belongings in it.”

A long pause.

Then, the monarch sighed. “Naturally, of course, you’re being so easy and cooperative so far, why would I have assumed different.”

The muttering didn’t seem to be for him, and everyone politely ignored it, so he did too.

“You’ll leave tomorrow, in the morning. We’ll reimburse you or the Academy whatever funds you require to a reasonable extent. Dismissed.”

He was back at that massive door, sunk deep into stone and glowing with the crisp blue of mana. Minerva wasn’t accompanying him this time, he was going to head in alone. Schweizer’s dungeon was personal. He had that bad habit of putting all his personal possessions in it. Lukas didn’t want anyone else to paw through his belongings, the messy, scribbled-on notebooks, the cute but failed golems, the random trinkets of oddly shaped pebbles and water-smoothed glass.

He took a deep breath. Braced himself. Put a hand on the spherical interface and poured magic into it.

The expected uncomfortable pinching feeling as his mana was siphoned off, then a puff of smoke burst from in front of him. The smoke coalesced, shifting to form the shape of a young boy, dressed in black trimmed in gold and with a white cloak over his shoulders.

“One, two, one, two, testing, testing.”

A familiar voice, that tugged at his heart. It was like coming home, to baying laughter and gushing over golems, to being chattered at and then abandoned for frantic notetaking as he realised the solution to a problem.

He clenched his shaking fingers into fists, tried to subdue the trembling in his shoulders.

“Welcome to my dungeon!” Schweizer continued cheerfully, clapping his hands.

It was only an illusion, but it had been _so long_ since he had seen him, so long since he had heard his voice, it had been so, so long. He’d almost forgotten what Schweizer had looked like.

And now he saw him again.

Finally.

After an eternity spent in an endless abyss of _nothingness_.

“How… did you die?” he asked, desperately, futilely.

Schweizer continued talking. “Of course I can’t let you just waltz in here! I’ll give you a question and if you answer it correctly, you can enter the first room.”

It was just an illusion. There was almost nothing of the man he’d known and loved in the facsimile in front of him. It couldn’t answer him.

Wetness ran down his cheeks and he gritted his teeth but didn’t bother wiping the tears away. He had thought he had known what it felt like to miss him so utterly, but that was just a drop in a giant ocean of emptiness and loneliness next to staring Schweizer in the eye and hearing his voice again and knowing that none of it was real, he could not reach out and touch him again no matter how much he tried, he could not bury his fingers in constantly ruffled feathers, he could not breathe in the smell of fire and that particular sharp quality to his mana, and it _hurt_. It _tore_ at him, where he thought his heart was already hollowed out by his grief and loneliness.

It might have been better to have never stepped foot in this place at all. Except no, it wasn’t. This was where Schweizer left is everything, his legacy, his treasures, everything that he owned and cared for and this is where Schweizer would have left his gifts to them after his passing.

This was where Schweizer would have left the weapons essential to fighting Demigod.

“Well, it’s not like me to drag things out!” he distantly heard that illusion say, like he was hearing it from far away, or through a thick window.

“I’ll just ask the question,” the illusion continued, “What do I, Schweizer Strow, hate the most?”

The air caught in his lungs. What did he hate the most? There could only be one answer to that. The only thing left alive from their time. The thing that had killed everyone, dropped him into a living hell for four fucking _thousand_ years.

He spat out the word, foul-tasting and poisonous. “Demigod.”

The illusion celebrated and congratulated him, then disappeared in another puff of smoke as the great doors opened.

Inside was another room, with another set of similarly gigantic double doors on the far side, and two large golems, each as tall as the doors, flanking them. The room was mostly empty, all but picked clean of the treasures that Schweizer had guarded.

He clenched his fists, breathed in deeply, let the anger go with it. The people who had taken from the dungeon were probably dead by now, taken by either danger or time. And this was only the first room of many. Schweizer himself cared none for the trash here.

He crossed the room to the doors.

Another illusion of Schweizer puffed into existence, slightly older this time. A young man instead of a boy. He probably grew older with each illusion and each room.

Lukas answered the second question easily, then proceeded to the next room, where his suspicions were confirmed.

He passed through many rooms like this, increasingly filled as they went on as those entering grew increasingly unable to proceed, until he was walking through room after room piled high with priceless trash.

The only odd thing about it all – people taking from the dungeon was, he was reluctant to concede, not very unusual at all – was that none of the questions were related to magecraft, or to golems or anything other than random little factoids about Schweizer; like his favourite tea (cloud tea grown in one specific region and that one specific region only) or least enjoyed play (that one depicting a battle against some force or another—he’d been mortally offended at the actor’s lack of likeness to himself).

Then he reached the last room. Schweizer was old, older than he’d been since Lukas last saw him. He must have lived a long time after he had been taken. His heart ached for Schweizer. He had had to live with the knowledge that there was no way to tell whether Lukas was alive or dead, only that Demigod would have been anything but merciful.

“Lukas Traumen.”

His name, in Schweizer’s familiar voice. He gulped down gasps of air, the pain in his chest tearing at him so much he could barely breathe.

“It is my life’s greatest pride and joy to be able to call him a friend of mine.”

He swallowed the sob about to burst from his throat. “It is mine too,” he told the illusion in a hoarse whisper.

“The last question,” it declared, “What is my real name?”

Ah.

No wonder.

All those questions.

Designed not to welcome those with knowledge, but him. He, Lukas Traumen, alone.

It felt like the world had come to a stop and the one looking down at him wasn’t an illusion of Schweizer as a wizened old man, but Schweizer himself staring down at him with anticipation.

He licked his lips and swallowed thickly before answering with a clear voice. “Schweizer Wilsemann.”

The illusion smiled, lips cracking, and it really was like Schweizer was smiling at him. His hand fell through the illusion before he even knew he was reaching for it.

“Everything inside this room was prepared for you, Lukas.”

The illusion turned to dust and a puff of smoke that disappeared as quickly as if it had never been.

The great doors yawned open, and he followed the path through. He opened wooden door at the end of the stone hallway carefully, and stepped into a small room.

He felt like he’d be punched in the stomach, winded, off-balance, scrambling desperately for a semblance of control. His eyes were instantly drawn to that tea set, one which he could never fail to recognise, chipped and cracked and old as it was. He dared to brush fingers over the porcelain of a cup, delicate even under the strengthening and reinforcement spells he had cast on it when he had forced it upon Kasajin, and the preservation spells that Schweizer must have cast after his death.

Behind it, a statue of Kasajin. Lukas found it hard to imagine the warrior had settled down for long enough to get a likeness of himself carved out of stone, but he must have, because every curve, every line was exactly as he remembered.

He was almost scared to press fingers against the stone.

He didn’t want to break it, even more than the tea set.

He glanced around the small room a little more, saw the touches what had to be Kasajin. The man had never bothered to even think of making these stashes like the rest of them, he must have gone racing to Schweizer to ask to borrow a room.

Lukas huffed a laugh under his breath. Schweizer did pour more of himself and his investments into these stashes than the rest of them, probably more than the rest of them combined. And then Kasajin put a little of himself in here too, in his gloves, belt, and necklace draped over the desk, in the small charms arranged neatly on a shelf, in the heavy chest on the far side of the room, made of beaten bronze and thick monster hide.

All they were missing was Iris’ things, and it would be all four of them in a room again.

He reached out, touched the curl of a stray hair that wasn’t quite tucked behind Kasajin’s ear, traced the rising curve of his cheek.

A jolt shot through him. Mana was being drained from him, as glowing cracks grew in the stone.

Shocked, it took him too long to respond, and before he knew it, the stone was flying through the air. He summoned a wind, and the dust was quickly cleared.

He stared.

How—

It wasn’t possible—

Schweizer had—

Schweizer had always been the best of them in this respect.

“Kasajin?” He dared to breathe.

The tall, muscled man made flesh again smiled at him. The hug that engulfed him was crushing, avoiding crumpling wings like he always had four thousand years ago. He lifted his hands, hovered it over that broad back where feathers grew from skin, before daring to touch, clinging on with all his might.

“ _Kasajin_ ,” he sobbed.

“I’m back, Lukas.”

**Author's Note:**

> Some lines taken directly from/modified from the novel/webcomic. Most notably, the italicised lines in the very first scene.
> 
> Wings =/= souls. Lukas' era (4000yrs ago) just thought they did and also he's a dramatic bitch.
> 
> Title (as well as series title) comes from the poem "The Puppet-Player" by Angelina Weld Grimké. I thought it was extremely fitting for Demigod.
> 
> You can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/greymistchild)
> 
> Yes, it's "Lucas TrauMEN" not "Lucas TrauMAN". I don't know why, that's what the translators went with, we can only roll with it.


End file.
